Linux in Government: Outside the US, People Get It

Major governments outside the United States either have adopted Linux
and open-source software or have begun the process that will lead to
adoption. Open-source software, especially Linux, has spread globally
to countries and regions that regard it as the best model of software
development and an engine of economic growth. Governments see adoption
as a way to exploit a promising trend.

The starting point for global Linux adoption began in Europe approximately
four years ago. In 2001, the German parliament adopted a resolution
that declared the government should use open-source software
"whenever doing so will reduce costs". Two years later, a technology
advisory group to the European Commission issued a report that called
open-source software "a great opportunity" for the region that could
"change the rules in the information technology industry", reducing
Europe's reliance on imports.

In 2004, $19.5 billion of Linux-related technologies were sold in Poland
and Russia alone. During the same period, seven leading Indian enterprises
began porting application software and development work to Linux. Those
companies included BSNL; Indian Railway Catering and Tourism
Corporation; South Asian Petrochem, Ltd.; Kotak Mahindra Bank; IDBI
Bank; Central Bank of India; and the Department of Treasury, Government of
West Bengal.

In Latin America, the six largest markets comprise the fastest growing
region for Linux adoption anywhere. The six markets include Argentina,
Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Venezuela. According to a recent
IDC report, "the Linux operating system is gaining broader acceptance
in the vendor and user communities in Latin America, making it one of
the fastest-growing segments within the operating system software market".
Other examples abound, including Spain, Norway and South Africa.

What's Stopping the US?

Interestingly, the US government appears to favor a company it deemed a
monopoly over Linux and open-source software. While technically educated
Linux and open-source work forces have grown in Germany, China, Brazil,
India and Hungary since 2001, the US government has done nothing to
keep pace with the rest of the world. Only a decade ago, the US held a
technological edge over Europe and Asia in all areas of IT. Today, the
once burgeoning IT industry in the US has given way to its competitors,
especially China and India.

These countries among others have gained the capacity and the
desire to change. People also have seen Linux markets around the globe
strengthen. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that any
country can assemble parts from China and put its own label on the
resulting personal computers with ease. The only thing left to add is
an operating system, and people can get one for free.

In my travels and work with governments, I have seen only one
organization oppose Linux and open-source software. Regardless of where
I go, Microsoft shows up and argues against open source. If the
opposition doesn't call itself Microsoft, then it calls itself the Business
Software Alliance or some other alter-ego.

One would think that the United States government eventually would
conclude that not only has it lost its lead in technology, but
perhaps the ugliest American of them all shows up as our de facto
representative. Personally, I would rather have Condoleezza Rice's
State Department showing up at technology hearings in foreign governments
rather than Microsoft.

Finally, one might consider that by destroying its competitors,
Microsoft has weakened the US technology sector rather than strengthening
it. Look around and we see a technology sector suffering so badly
that US universities have seen enrollment in computer sciences drop
to nil. Additionally, the once well-trained US information technology
workforce has aged, moved into other industries and suffered from the
influx of foreign competitors.

On Global Soil GNU/Linux Has the Momentum

Earlier this year, Microsoft announced partnerships with three of
China's leading computer makers: Founder Technology, Tsinghua Tongfang
and TCL. The partnerships involve bundling the Windows operating system,
promoting the use of legal operating systems and giving customers greater
added value, according to the announcements. Conspicuously absent was
China's biggest computer maker, Lenovo Group. From reports I have read,
the absence prompted many questions from the audience.

Microsoft reportedly explained that additional Chinese computer
makers would join the program in the future. They also reportedly said
that Lenovo was "busy with consolidation issues" resulting from its
acquisition of IBM's PC unit. But is that really the case?

Many believe Lenovo will increase its use of Linux, which competes with
Windows. Last year, Lenovo adopted Linux and partnered with IBM, the
largest corporate supporter of Linux. As a user of an IBM Thinkpad, I have
been pleasantly surprised at the increased Linux support for legacy IBM
laptops from Lenovo. I never saw drivers, utilities and modules to support
the Thinkpad's power management under Linux when IBM ran the company.

Regardless of Microsoft's claims, the development of Linux's operating
systems in China has velocity and magnitude and shows signs of strong
future growth. Another report from International Data Corp (IDC)
indicates that Linux's growing popularity in China might be more than
a trend.

Europe/Socialism: Consistently Mediocre. Kinda Like McDonalds. It doesn't suck, but it's bland and maddeningly lowest common denominator. No other choices. USA: Hit or Miss, Really Really Great, or really bad. Kinda like trying a mom and pop restaurant you've never been to on vacation. Variations all across the spectrum, and the freedom to vote with your purse.

all this hole article make me remember of a little enterprise that made transgenic seeds for soil. They had an incredible life cycle, and of course a huge amount of gain compared with what you had to invest for getting this seeds...
So the hard-code joke was that on the second season, or second year (the same), you have harvested and by natural-cause, you'll also have obtained a lot of seeds.
IMAO, lots of seeds=lots of benefits.
But, this little entreprise had the patents of this seeds
ROLF, they had patent the seeds, so every farm that has used that seeds for the next planting season had to pay a FEE or a CANNON for the SOIL plants hahaah....(the new harvest, gave the farmers new seeds, by natural-cause ;-)
Just, imagine what the poor farmers said, ..."You must be kiding right??, we got to pay you for every soil-plant a tax percent???.. WTF, go to h3LL!!!"...

What I am trying to say is that foremost the highest problem that US has with free-software, is that if the goverment starts to implement Linux or *nix alternatives on the Goverments, and States, lol IMAO, it's just like saying hence to all this Patent System!!, it's just obsolete it just don't work is total-nonsense.
Stop dreaming and get into reality, the whole idea of implementing free-software on the US goverments collapses, all the US-patent politics, is like Condoleeza Rice saying ..."Hey Mr. Hugo Chavez, we really don't trust too much our patent system, however they are valid, sign here and you'll have the Bush FBI tax income since he was born"

the article about soil-seeds.http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:Sa1QHBFgE6wJ:www.pas.org.ar/articulos/Monsanto-nonsanto.pdf+monsanto&hl=es&ct=clnk&cd=4&gl=ar

conclusion: as for marketing being mysterious really pays off
Feel free to use imagination and suppose or speculate whatever the h3nce you want about my little opinion.

Brasil, have, nowadays, a especific policy to handle with open source, at least, Linux. ON federal and, also in several states. In less then 4 four years we've seemed a significant reducing on windows based servers and the desktop will come in place in a near future.

Despite how concerned you are about Win X Linux the fact is, Microsoft rely on the expense side of the table game. The MS product are black boxes, you never have tech aknologment and will probably a "forevere" dependent of the MS development.

When you think in terms of govenment expenses, on an "in development country" where money is limited. Agree to waste milion of dollars for OS and Office suites, each two years is a big problem.

Also, in terms of education, i'ts a very bad choice to use a black box in educational field. Will us just to teach "cake recipes", point and click, isntead to really teach how the things works.

You know what really scares me - the US Govt., running out of techological and financial steam as its competitors pull ahead and gradually open up their societies and adopt more rigorous accountability, gleefully putting weapons in space that it can't afford to make or to maintain.

And in so doing, locking NEO off from anyone who they don't approve of, and finally locking themselves out of it completely.

Silly old U.S. What do they know? That country only has more resources, more money, self-rule & free elections, a higher standard of living, better (unsocialized) health care, the only remaining superpower armed forces, government supported nutrition programs for mothers, a free market that still retains a safety net, choices of quality public or private schools, more career choices, both private retirement and a simplified socialized form, etc., than any other nation in the world. Why, oh WHY?, won't they listen to some random coder who wrote a book?

If you're referring to the author ... I know the guy. He's not some random coder who wrote some book. He's written 20 - most on economics; held a presidential appointment to the Library of Congress; consulted the Fed; was CEO of a NYSE firm; has a CPA; broke the code of Exchange; brought in the first major Linux account for IBM on a mainframe; was an Outstanding Man in America; one of the top 100 paid executives in the US; ah and I don't remember the other stuff -- oh lots of awards.

That's not the point. Take shots at the author all you want -- he could be Wild Bill Hickup for all anyone cares. His point is obvious -- the US is suffering and ten years ago, we were the major IT country.

The health care system really sucks and it's getting worse, poverty is at an all time high, people who should be powering investment are broke and without a job (executives in their big earning years), and banks don't loan money to small businesses.

You don't have to wait 26 years either. It took less than ten to lose the factories that made memory, monitors, cases, motherboards, CPU's, hard drives, peripherals. Don't super power me.

Great civilizations thorughout history rise and fall. Sometimes those civilizations fall because their participants hasten the fall. Many Americans are their own worst enemies.

Don't you read the papers? HP to layoff, Oracle to layoff, IBM to layoff, GM to layoff, EDS to layoff, SBC to layoff -- you smelling some 'em funni?

For the 1 million tech workers in the US out of jobs since 2000 -- they don't count them in the unemployment stats. Butthead. Who cares what Bill Gates says? He wants to bring more people in and put more mericans out of work.

> Silly old U.S. What do they know? That country only has more
> resources, more money, self-rule & free elections, a higher
> standard of living, better (unsocialized) health care, the only
> remaining superpower armed forces, government supported nutrition
> programs for mothers, a free market that still retains a safety
> net, choices of quality public or private schools, more career
> choices, both private retirement and a simplified socialized form, > etc., than any other nation in the world. Why, oh WHY?, won't they > listen to some random coder who wrote a book?

I agree wholeheartedly. They should listen to a guy who dropped out of college, skived BASIC code from somebody's dumpster, and 'wrote' MS-DOS, thereby setting the precedent of predation and rip-offs that culminated in MS as it stands to today (or as it stood a few years ago)

If you don't like Linux, then why are you reading this page? Why do you even care if you MS is so high-and-mighty? Linus is a doctor of computer science who works at a major computing firm in Silicon Valley. Bill is, well, a business degree dropout. Who do you think is more qualified to dictate the direction of an OS kernel? Who is the idiot that put GUI functionality into the core of the OS? What the hell was Bill smoking?

Have fun; I think I enjoy living in a country where I don't have to look at morbidly obese people all the time.

>False assumptions. I use and like linux. I just don't preach it is a >road to heaven. It's a tool to get work done, just like M$, BSD, >Whatever should be.

There's no need to disparage then. That came off as awfully snotty for someone who claims to like Linux.

I use FreeBSD, too, I am not preaching Linux like it's the path to heaven either. I just don't buy that high-handed 'pragmatic' baloney about platform agnostic attitudes. Windows is absolutely piece of shit, and I go out of my way to avoid it in my career. So far I have been pretty damn successful...months since I had to use it at work.

But I guess I'm lucky because of where I live.

"Unless you're an astronaut, secret agent, vampire hunter, or all three, you're probably a sellout; screw you. Nobody wanted to be a regional director of sales or an investment banker when they were kids."

You have to follow your dreams. This is important above everything else. I am an unreasonable man, and I do not accept the world. I make it fit ME. Windoze is consequently not part of my world.

No business decisions should be based on one type of platform. I recently moved to Germany and they are the most uptight, anal people on the face of the planet. Yet Linux is HUGE here.

Yes, in general, Windows is a piece of crap. However, it does some things very well. Exchange and Outlook is an excellent choice for running a corporate email system for one example. And before I get flamed by, "yea right, if you want viruses", the reason is that there wasn't really a comparable email platform available up until recently. It's no fun for a virus writer to write something malicious if it won't effect anyone!

However, if you want to run a web farm, Linux or BSD is definitely the way to go.

There is no way I would choose anything other than a Big Unix for SAP platforms.

ECommerce can run effectively on just about anything.

If you think the Government or any other large corporation should turn to OSS, I would say, it's just not mature enough. It's not that the software isn't mature enough, the problem is that the support system isn't mature enough.

There are tons of consulting firms who actually have very talented people to bail you out when your in-house IT staff can't solve a problem. That situation is getting better but is still concentrated on MS products.

Linux and OSS are gaining popularity quickly but won't be seen as a viable wide spread solution until the support structure improves.

The oft used implication that Microsoft represent Capitalism and all of its benefits as opposed to a collectivist Open Source is a balloon that needs to be punctured at every opportunity.

Capitalism can't work with the absence of competition. It is the collectivist notion of state-owned monopolies that make ultimately doomed to fail. Just in case you re under 30, the US didn't gain all those advantages you mentioned as a result of Microsoft. We were in many respects stronger and more free before 1980. You can't blame Microsoft for the rise of terrorism, nor can you credit them for the fall of the Soviet Union.

On the other hand the effect of the Microsoft monopoly on software technology and to a lesser extent the effect of the Intel monopoly on hardware technology can indeed be documented, and it isn't for the most part, a good thing.

Even Bill Gates sees that there is something wrong. He is mystified by it:

Elsewhere at Microsoft project managers are wondering why their kid's only use for computers is playing games. It was in fact fairly mindless activities that first began to ingratiate Windows into the corporate workplace in the first place.

Speaking of which, it was the BSA that first tried to end software piracy in the USA (a worthy goal) and found their efforts thwarted by none other than Microsoft who wanted to pick and choose who they would let steal their software. They knew full well that small companies were pirating Windows and Office and they were just fine with that, until those companies started showing nice profits. The last thing they wanted was the BSA to conduct a raid too soon and risk putting the pirate-users out of business.

I'm afraid that the effectiveness of the governmental bribery that goes on as a matter of course will keep Microsoft healthy for a good long while yet. It will instead be the US technology workers who end up playing middle-man between end users and those actually doing the work in other parts of the world who will bear the burden of the US becoming a 3rd-world technology country.

As we have seen with IBM, happily unloading the PC business to the Chinese, it is a matter of time before companies like Microsoft, if they are going to survive as international entities will find it easier to transfer the bulk of their operations elsewhere and concentrate on marketing and end-user consulting (middle-man work) here in the States. If that's the sort of thing you like to do you have nothing to worry about. Some things HAVE to be done locally: plumbing, carpentry, legal work, health care, marketing. Everything else has, or can eventually go elsewhere and unless we wake up here, it will.

I wish Microsoft would use encryted software and dongles for their Windows and Office products.
This way copying would be a lot harder to accomplish than just download the latest cracked version from the internet. And MS's market share would immediately start declining steeply.

A few years ago, I still helped some friends of mine maintain their often pirated Microsoft software. Nowadays I don't do that if the software is pirated, I just offer them alternate free software.

I think the biggest issue in why the US are not getting to open source is the Lobby-Work of "the industry". Of course Linux has no lobby, where you (as a member of parliament) can get invited to a nice dinner - a nice holiday - or this lobby support your political party with a huge cheque 8-)))))) ... that is why the US is not using Linux in Government. The good old bribes-thing, just done the legal way.

It's well-known in India that if you want to do business, you have to pay the government officials. I have seen with my own eyes such things. The government official says that he had to struggle very hard to get into his position and now he deserves the results of his struggle. So, he and the company representative go on holiday to a nice resort in the mountains and the money is exchanged. And yet, Linux is growing in India. I believe that since Linux goes to the common people, not the high ranking children who go to the schools like IIT, that it is a great hope for ending such corruption. That should go for other countries also.